I am just now trying out outlook 2007 since I just got Msoffice 2007.
But have been using Outlook Express with Win Xp. I have tried out a few since I know I will have to find something when I change from win xp. Been a fan of OE for years.
I can tell you the closest thing to it. Itís actually just like it and a little better.
OECLASSIC
Tried it at a friendís house and just as easy, simple and fast as the original OE. Looks just like it. Try the free version but I think you have to pay for a version with more than 2 accounts.
Since I paid for office with outlook I am going to see if I can get use to that first before I use the oeclassic myself.
Main thing I see with outlook is it does not work as fast as my old outlook express. And I really just need something simple.

Having tried Outlook and Outlook Express and a couple of others, and always finding some limitations, I started using Eudora since version 3 or 4, now on 7.1. I love it because it has more capabilities. As I recall (it's been along time since I started with it) I like:

* Its super-flexible filtering capabilities
* The ability for a filter to trigger an action, like sending a specific file back, running a program (and much more)
* Emails are stored in text format so recovery is far easier than packed files that can be corrupted and lose everything. In Eudora, just skip over copying the corrupted section.
* Tabbed & windowed mailboxes
* Configurable toolbars

Mail server setup is a little convoluted to me, but other than that, all is good.
I've used it on everything thru Win7. Haven't tried it on Win8, but I haven't started using my Win8 machine. I have worked a fair amount on Win8, and I think you should have not problem running it.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at richard (at) mail-xpress (.com). I'm pretty demanding in my needs because I've been a system admin for 20 years.

Edit: HTML coming in reads fine, and pasting good HTML into an email works too. The problem is when you forward, the new message elements look like a list, rather than preserviing the original layout.

Not true. 7.1 and earlier was a Qualcomm product. Subsequent development as done by Mozilla spinoff. 7.1 always had great reviews, and if you needed a powerful email program, Eudora was an excellent choice.

If a person really liked Outlook Express, then they should use it's big brother.....Windows Mail.
In Vista, it worked just fine, but in the later OS's, it's been disabled by MS. Why is anyone's guess.
It sets up just like O.E.6, looks like O.E. and will import all the address book and email from O.E.

It takes a little bit of slight of hand to re-Activate it in Win-7, Win-8 or Win-8.1, but, it's all together do'able.
We've discussed the technique for doing that in other threads. I won't repeat it here.

I do it all the time, for myself and my customers who are upgrading their OS from Windows XP to whatever.

There's NO reason at all, for anyone to have to go through a learning curve on a totally new program.

I've tried a few myself, like Thunderbird, but they all fell short and I went right back to O.E. or WinMail.

I swear by (not at) Eudora, even though my students were recently laughing at its outdated-looking interface. I've been using it since the mid-90s (currently in Win 7 with Eudora 7.1) I have tens of thousands of emails stored in probably more than 100 boxes and use it to simultaneously check mail from several accounts/"personalities." I've researched other email applications and dread the day I'm forced to migrate to another, probably less functional, program.

I've always stored my Eudora data (settings and email folders) in my separate Data partition, primarily so it gets easily backed up with my other data. I've never had a problem in telling Eudora that the data is in a non-standard location.

My only reservations about it are (A) its somewhat limited formatting, (2) the fact that I can't tell it to put my signature at the end of my replies (at the top) rather than the end of the entire email, and (C) it has a several seconds delay after deleting emails, but that's probably because I'm not good at keeping my In box clean.

Oh yeah, (D) it doesn't seem to delete attachments when the email is deleted (even though I have "delete attachments when trash is deleted" checked in Options). So my Attachments and Embedded folders are humongous. (I've created old attachment folders from time to time where I move attachments to).

Eudora

I've used Eudora since the early 2000s and always enjoyed its straight forward interface. I did IT work for a college research department as well as engineering. I found Eudora safer than Outlook and and other alternatives and recommended it to the rest department. I was still using it daily until this month and had to change to T-Bird because ATT/Yahoo now require specific inbound and outbound ports (995 & 465) and I know of no way to change Eudora's default ports. Eudora made setting up email on replacement PCs a breeze because you simply copy it to the new PCs program files and run the installer. It picked up all settings, mail and folders. I'll miss it
Lee

I was still using it daily until this month and had to change to T-Bird because ATT/Yahoo now require specific inbound and outbound ports (995 & 465) and I know of no way to change Eudora's default ports.
Lee

Lee, have a look at the Eudora support page: http://www.eudora.com/techsupport/kb/1501hq.html
It looks like it should be possible to change to any desired port numbers by editing the settings file. I haven't tried it, since I don't need it.

Eudora

Originally Posted by arne

Lee, have a look at the Eudora support page: http://www.eudora.com/techsupport/kb/1501hq.html
It looks like it should be possible to change to any desired port numbers by editing the settings file. I haven't tried it, since I don't need it.

Thanks for the information! I tried it this morning and it seems to be working fine. I'll watch it for awhile and all is stable I'll nuke T-bird.
Long Live Eudora

The only bugbear is that many senders use Outlook and edit their mails in Word, which adds a shovel-load of extra formatting tags that Eudora can't handle. I have to ask each of my Outlook contacts to make sure they send me mails in plain text so I can read them (or I have to switch to my webmail momentarily).

Other than that, it's bulletproof. I've been trying to find a replacement (almost went for MailForge), but nothing else quite comes up to scratch.

If anyone out there can write an add-on that will allow it to decipher Word-speak I'LL BE WILLING TO PAY FOR IT!

I hope Eudora will hang on for the long haul. Tried Thunderbird but didn't really like it. Tried G mail briefly but have grave concerns about Google's privacy practices.
I frequently use Word to clean up emails before forwarding and didn't know of any problems. Never got any negative feedback. I hope all I sent went smoothly...........

At the most, Ive only used 2 accounts in Eudora so I can't say how it would do with so many. A great deal depends on your ISP. Mine is ATT which contracts out to Yahoo to handle email. I get multiple errors a day in Eudora and I'm sure they are related to Yahoo. I'll stick with Eudora 7.1 though as I tried T-Bird and the newer Eudora and didn't like them. Eudora is good in handling many folders and mailboxes which is a necessity for me.